Vroom Vroom... with the Infosys Automotive Solution

Automotive
Industry has been largely ahead of the innovation curve bringing in more
technology to the vehicle towards the needs of the market. But all this while,
they were challenged working with their own archaic systems. Good customer
experience does not just mean good client facing applications but also the
entire supply chain has to be customer oriented. Each of the supply chain
elements need to be integrated to the get the part/vehicle at the right place
at the right time.

Writing in fear of being cliché, an Automotive supply chain
has its own complexities which sometimes are not as intuitive to anyone who
does not live and breathe this industry. This is where Infosys Automotive
Solution has been crafted and perfected over the years, to cater to such specific
supply chain challenges.

1.Supersessions:
This is where the rubber hits the road. Almost every leading ERP product in the
market has functionality to define supersessions but is it integrated to the
entire process?? The answer will be "No". The complexity does not end with ensuring we
are selling always the oldest part of the supply chain but we are also buying the
latest part in the chain. Ensuring the End of life and forecasting processes
for the product chain are tied together. Even from a pricing perspective, how
is the solution going to align the prices along the chain or create incentives
for driving buying behavior from dealers?

2.Referrals:
Referral is a concept beyond Promising. How does one ensure we refer to the
next nearest warehouse to meet the demand to ensure customer experience does
not take a hit? While doing this, how do we keep the logistics cost minimal?
How do we ensure we follow the milk run routes or do rate shopping real time?
How do we ensure routes are combined together? While traditionally these
problems are solved through transport integrations but many have solved this
problem too much downstream.

3.Fair
share: When we are in a back order situation in the entire network and
there are continuing supply constraints, how do we ensure that the incoming
supplies are transferred and is fair shared across all distribution centers.
Should it be based on FIFO, or customer priority etc.? These are problems that applications
have continued to ignore putting these as execution problems.

4.Slotting:
Warehouse space is real state, how do we ensure that the fastest goods are
always picked fastest. Also will the fastest always remain fastest? Or will
there be seasonality, trends which we have to cater to. Slotting is ensuring
that a continuous proactive process.

5.Dealer
incentives: This is an important part of the supply chain, often ignored.
Supply chains are like humans, unless we build in incentives, we won't be able
to drive the required behavior from the supply chain constituents. The big question would be what should we stock
at dealer inventories which are client facing and what we stock at middle level
warehouses vs central warehouses. At the end of the day, inventory budget and
customer service levels will drive the decisions but a dealer would only be
concerned about their own profitability.

While we covered some of the nuances of the automotive spare
part supply chain, there are many more such niche challenges which are unique
and have been built in Infosys
Automotive Supply ChainSolution.
The solution not only covers the spare part supply chain but also caters to
vehicle business as well. Additionally, we have solution flavor catering to
Tier1 suppliers as well. To know more, reach out to us at Oracle Modern Supply
Chain event at San Jose.@ OracleMSCE @Infy from 29-31st January
2018.